News Production: Project Evaluation
News Production has been an interesting unit, and I have definitely learned a lot from it. When I first started it I though it would share a lot in common with our documentary unit; its usually topical news, and how wrong I was. This Unit we had to make our own News Channel (News Grad) and not only create its first episode but also create a full channel, promotional trailer and website.
To some extent, we walked into our first group meeting already knowing who our target audience was. We were all students and wanted to make something that we ourselves would be interested in and would watch. Making our target audience people in the same category as us means we would know what they want and would enjoy the content ourselves and therefore be passionate about what we were making.
After our first meeting we all agreed to set off and research our ideas to see if they were feasible. Because I also had the idea of budgeting at uni I went on to explore that in terms of food shopping etc (which later evolved into our top five tips, which after our fine cut viewing we cut all together). Researching these two ideas I was abel to gather a lot of useful information that we could apply. Something I really wanted for he budgeting was some statistics of on average how much money students spend in an average week, and what percentage of money goes on what. Food shopping and transport were two of my biggest concerns because of how expensive they were. I contacted Arriva Bus Company to see if they offered anything to students and they did, but the discount was so minor it was hardly worth applying and after asking if they offered anything more significant they said it was initially down to the universities. This would've made a good news story, but having discussed with the group we decided on the Student Nurse bursary cuts story.
Some good inspiration for me was actually creating mood boards. This was visually good and really stimulated ideas. In fact it was after doing a moodpboard on students and graduation that helped us decide on the colours for our logo and branding for the entire news channel. I did this again for the tech section which was inspiring and also very much inspired by a tech YouTuber Alex Brooks (Marzbar).
After having a practice live news story (Johns Campaign) we received some feedback from the rest of the class and it became apparent that we needed to change up our camera shots a bit more. It was a good start with the walk in, but the rest was stationary and got tedious. We learned for this in our actual live shoot with the student nurses, by keeping the walkie talkie, and varying the camera angles, including wides and medium close ups.
Having conducted a lot of research, I felt confident in our content for our News Channel. There is plenty of cheap, quirky tech out there that people don't know about. This would be enough to keep up regular content to be posted on a weekly/monthly basis. As for the DIY tech, there are plenty of cool ideas out there and a few I know myself.
However, the pre-production process was far from smooth. Although we were able to learn from some mistakes, a big problem for us was getting hold of student nurse to interview. We were really struggling as no matter how many places we contacted, we found nobody wanted to speak out about it. We contacted 'The Royal College of Nursing and spoke to their press office, and attempted University of London with their adult nursing course. We were directed to the main reception who recommended he sent an email first, otherwise he couldn't speak to them. We never heard back from them. This sort of thing happened many times and we were about to give up and find a completely different story to cover or our live production. Lucky Jack managed to get in touch with a family fried who was a student nurse who was happy to be interviewed, and also had a friend who was also interested. So we began to write our script and questions with these two nurses included.
The day before we were due to film our pre-recorded pieces, our presenter Tom dropped out. He was also quite big to the piece so sub a last minute drop our was a great inconvenience, but we respected this as it was a bigger opportunity for him.It left us with the dilemma to find a new presenter. Lucky Jack had been filling in for him I the practice sessions so he knew what to do and was willing to fill in. Because Jack didn't feel too confident presenting it was a struggle at first and we had to keep re-filming; this wasn't his fault by any means and we were all grateful for him to be doing it.
We spend a fair bit of time planning and filming our 'top five tips', which we filmed in my student house. This was the second of our packages and we envisioned it better than what it actually came out. I feel if we cut it down more and made it after paced to suit the energy it would've worked well. A problem we came across when filming was the lack of space to set the camera up with all the appropriate lighting. We knew of this from receding the location, but we struggled to find a student house that did have enough room and this was the best of all our options. Another problem we came across was the lighting we used would overheat quite a lot, but as a result of there being dust on the bulb it would burn and produce smoke which seemed like a health and safety hazard so we had t have one of us keeping a close eye on them, and have them on as little as possible (so only when setting up with the camera and doing a final take). They managed to hold up okay in the end and we prevented any accidents from happening by putting these measurements into place.
A problem we came across was we were unable to get hold of a door stop. This was for one of our top 5 tips to stay sociable in our flat by keeping your door open. We thought we could get one on the way to shoot from Tesco as it said online, but when we reached the store they didn’t have any. This turned out to work in our favour as we found a way around it. I suggested we use any relatively heavy objects, so its free and you can prop the door open with pretty much anything. Most students wouldn’t necessarily be bothered to get a door stop so suggesting they use anything is more convenient to them when they get there. This reminded me very much of my work experience on BBCs 'Watchdog' when on shoot day we needed to pick up a chair from Ikea to use as a prop on the way to shoot in Birmingham. There was a slight rush to pick this up as we needed to be on location for the interview in time, but there was a delay in Ikea in getting hold of the chair which set us back by an hour. It just goes to show that this sort of thing occurs in production all the time, even in a professional environment.
The entire production process has been a great learning curve for me, as so much hadn't gone to plan but it was really all about the recovery. We realised when watching in post production that when using the green screen, Jack was presenting and moving his arms a lot and unfortunately at times half his arms would escape the green screen board which means in post production, half his arm would go missing. This was beyond recover and meant re-filming. Though inconvenient to us it was for the better as this didn't look professional. Also, when re-filming Jack had had some experience presenting and came across even better, our lighting was mastered so its aesthetic look was significantly better than what it was previously. This matched the rest of the quality of out News Grad episode. This just goes to show the importance of team work; we didn't let the issues we had get in the way and certainly didn't give up. We worked well together to overcome our mistakes, and stayed positive throughout.
The audio waste of the biggest issues and it needed to be foxed. I felt I did a pretty good job of editing the audio in the end. Although it wasn't perfect when I finished editing, it was still a lot better than what it was before.
So my first instinct was to try and edit this in 'Adobe Audition'. I tried watching a few tutorials on I spoke to Sam Creamer and together we went over a several solutions in order to try and fix the audio issue, but we struggled to make a great difference. So we spoke to Fergus with his understanding and experience with audio editing and he himself is an audiophile; it felt appropriate to see him next. After Helens feedback on acknowledging the background noise, I recorded a voice over and edited some GV's together to have a pre-recorded intro which was good in working on our feedback.
Editing this audio was really beneficial to me and meant I was able to learn and pickup a lot of skills I didn't previously have. It gave me confidence to carry on further to make this live interview sound as good as it could. To some extend I'm glad I came across with audio issues as I have developed greater skills in ending sound which is really beneficial to me, especially in editing.
I found this just as useful as the After Effects workshops we had, which was great for giving me an insight into the editing software. Although I wasn't editing many graphics for our news channel (Simon was), the skills in 'After Effects' were invaluable.
We showed Sam Creamer our rough cut and he gave us some feedback and said that the entire piece should be the quality it is for the second half as it gets a lot better. I agree with Sam in this as we have a fair few decent scenes included like my graduation photo shoot introduction scene. We made some of the changes Sam suggested and went to see Helen the following day for a fine cut viewing. As it turned out we received a lot more constructive feedback than we initially thought, which seemed like a setback but was actually genuinely useful. I knew our piece was missing something and at times seemed tedious with its limited camera positioning, and lengthy pieces to camera. Our option was to cut this down and have quicker cuts, as Helen suggested the high energy is lost with the lengthy PTCs with one shot. After receiving this feedback we decided to cut the 'top five tips' package and just up the quality of everything else and reshuffle the order. This was a big jump to make and meant re-filming some sequences again which was a huge setback for us, but we agreed with Helens feedback and all knew inside it was the right thing to do. Yes, we need up throwing away a lot of our footage we worked hard on planning, filming and editing but Helen was right; it was our of place and needed to be a lot faster paced in order to keep up with the energy throughout the rest of the episode. We re-filmed some sequences and re-shuffled the edit and made it flow a lot better. I'm pleased with the changes we made and feel it also acts on what Sam said about the quality being on the same high-level throughout.
Strengths
Pre-Production
Pre-Production is a challenging but exciting process. It is where our idea was born and after our first meeting we came out with loads of different suggestions and we were all able to contribute our own thoughts and opinions. It was this flow of ideas that created the grounds for our idea; News Grad came from my idea of having a tech section where we review cheap and affordable tech (which soon evolved to also having DIY tech). Gavin had the idea of student nurses which was current in the news, which then became our live story. Jack and Simon wanted to talk about saving money; both live at home since they're not too far from university and wanted to talk about the positives and negatives of living at home vs student accommodation.To some extent, we walked into our first group meeting already knowing who our target audience was. We were all students and wanted to make something that we ourselves would be interested in and would watch. Making our target audience people in the same category as us means we would know what they want and would enjoy the content ourselves and therefore be passionate about what we were making.
After our first meeting we all agreed to set off and research our ideas to see if they were feasible. Because I also had the idea of budgeting at uni I went on to explore that in terms of food shopping etc (which later evolved into our top five tips, which after our fine cut viewing we cut all together). Researching these two ideas I was abel to gather a lot of useful information that we could apply. Something I really wanted for he budgeting was some statistics of on average how much money students spend in an average week, and what percentage of money goes on what. Food shopping and transport were two of my biggest concerns because of how expensive they were. I contacted Arriva Bus Company to see if they offered anything to students and they did, but the discount was so minor it was hardly worth applying and after asking if they offered anything more significant they said it was initially down to the universities. This would've made a good news story, but having discussed with the group we decided on the Student Nurse bursary cuts story.
Some good inspiration for me was actually creating mood boards. This was visually good and really stimulated ideas. In fact it was after doing a moodpboard on students and graduation that helped us decide on the colours for our logo and branding for the entire news channel. I did this again for the tech section which was inspiring and also very much inspired by a tech YouTuber Alex Brooks (Marzbar).
After having a practice live news story (Johns Campaign) we received some feedback from the rest of the class and it became apparent that we needed to change up our camera shots a bit more. It was a good start with the walk in, but the rest was stationary and got tedious. We learned for this in our actual live shoot with the student nurses, by keeping the walkie talkie, and varying the camera angles, including wides and medium close ups.
Having conducted a lot of research, I felt confident in our content for our News Channel. There is plenty of cheap, quirky tech out there that people don't know about. This would be enough to keep up regular content to be posted on a weekly/monthly basis. As for the DIY tech, there are plenty of cool ideas out there and a few I know myself.
However, the pre-production process was far from smooth. Although we were able to learn from some mistakes, a big problem for us was getting hold of student nurse to interview. We were really struggling as no matter how many places we contacted, we found nobody wanted to speak out about it. We contacted 'The Royal College of Nursing and spoke to their press office, and attempted University of London with their adult nursing course. We were directed to the main reception who recommended he sent an email first, otherwise he couldn't speak to them. We never heard back from them. This sort of thing happened many times and we were about to give up and find a completely different story to cover or our live production. Lucky Jack managed to get in touch with a family fried who was a student nurse who was happy to be interviewed, and also had a friend who was also interested. So we began to write our script and questions with these two nurses included.
Production
On the day of production we came across another issue; Emma (the student nurse) was available to film for only 20minutes and her friend was so caught up in work she was unavailable for filming. This was fair enough as her job is her biggest priority, and we could respect that. However, that did put us in an awkward position as our filming time was limited. Lucky we recced the location and so were able to get to where we needed to go and park the car quickly. Another setback that came of this day of filming was the fact that Gavin was unavailable for filming so our crew was cut, and as a result of traffic Simon who was going to be on sound, was also late leaving me and jack to setup and we had to prepare to film with just two crew members. Simon turned up just in time to film but because of setting up we were already delayed and short of time. We knew there were sound issues when filming but we thought it best to resume filming and push aside the problem to just work with it. It was after Helens feedback in our fine cut viewing that I realised it would've been even better to acknowledge the traffic noise before because that way you look honest and the audience is expecting it and understanding rather than struggling. This is definitely something I will know and apply in the future should anything else go wrong in not only live interviews but when I am unable to change something on film. We had a great interview, where Emma, our student nurse gave us all good answers, elaborative for each and every question.The day before we were due to film our pre-recorded pieces, our presenter Tom dropped out. He was also quite big to the piece so sub a last minute drop our was a great inconvenience, but we respected this as it was a bigger opportunity for him.It left us with the dilemma to find a new presenter. Lucky Jack had been filling in for him I the practice sessions so he knew what to do and was willing to fill in. Because Jack didn't feel too confident presenting it was a struggle at first and we had to keep re-filming; this wasn't his fault by any means and we were all grateful for him to be doing it.
We spend a fair bit of time planning and filming our 'top five tips', which we filmed in my student house. This was the second of our packages and we envisioned it better than what it actually came out. I feel if we cut it down more and made it after paced to suit the energy it would've worked well. A problem we came across when filming was the lack of space to set the camera up with all the appropriate lighting. We knew of this from receding the location, but we struggled to find a student house that did have enough room and this was the best of all our options. Another problem we came across was the lighting we used would overheat quite a lot, but as a result of there being dust on the bulb it would burn and produce smoke which seemed like a health and safety hazard so we had t have one of us keeping a close eye on them, and have them on as little as possible (so only when setting up with the camera and doing a final take). They managed to hold up okay in the end and we prevented any accidents from happening by putting these measurements into place.
A problem we came across was we were unable to get hold of a door stop. This was for one of our top 5 tips to stay sociable in our flat by keeping your door open. We thought we could get one on the way to shoot from Tesco as it said online, but when we reached the store they didn’t have any. This turned out to work in our favour as we found a way around it. I suggested we use any relatively heavy objects, so its free and you can prop the door open with pretty much anything. Most students wouldn’t necessarily be bothered to get a door stop so suggesting they use anything is more convenient to them when they get there. This reminded me very much of my work experience on BBCs 'Watchdog' when on shoot day we needed to pick up a chair from Ikea to use as a prop on the way to shoot in Birmingham. There was a slight rush to pick this up as we needed to be on location for the interview in time, but there was a delay in Ikea in getting hold of the chair which set us back by an hour. It just goes to show that this sort of thing occurs in production all the time, even in a professional environment.
The entire production process has been a great learning curve for me, as so much hadn't gone to plan but it was really all about the recovery. We realised when watching in post production that when using the green screen, Jack was presenting and moving his arms a lot and unfortunately at times half his arms would escape the green screen board which means in post production, half his arm would go missing. This was beyond recover and meant re-filming. Though inconvenient to us it was for the better as this didn't look professional. Also, when re-filming Jack had had some experience presenting and came across even better, our lighting was mastered so its aesthetic look was significantly better than what it was previously. This matched the rest of the quality of out News Grad episode. This just goes to show the importance of team work; we didn't let the issues we had get in the way and certainly didn't give up. We worked well together to overcome our mistakes, and stayed positive throughout.
Post-production
When we reached pre-production, it was now our chance to fix any issues we had when filming, and put together all our hard work filming to see it all come together. The first big issue I wanted to work on was the live production; as mentioned earlier it wasn't our strongest point but that didn't mean I couldn't at lest try and fix it.The audio waste of the biggest issues and it needed to be foxed. I felt I did a pretty good job of editing the audio in the end. Although it wasn't perfect when I finished editing, it was still a lot better than what it was before.
So my first instinct was to try and edit this in 'Adobe Audition'. I tried watching a few tutorials on I spoke to Sam Creamer and together we went over a several solutions in order to try and fix the audio issue, but we struggled to make a great difference. So we spoke to Fergus with his understanding and experience with audio editing and he himself is an audiophile; it felt appropriate to see him next. After Helens feedback on acknowledging the background noise, I recorded a voice over and edited some GV's together to have a pre-recorded intro which was good in working on our feedback.
Editing this audio was really beneficial to me and meant I was able to learn and pickup a lot of skills I didn't previously have. It gave me confidence to carry on further to make this live interview sound as good as it could. To some extend I'm glad I came across with audio issues as I have developed greater skills in ending sound which is really beneficial to me, especially in editing.
I found this just as useful as the After Effects workshops we had, which was great for giving me an insight into the editing software. Although I wasn't editing many graphics for our news channel (Simon was), the skills in 'After Effects' were invaluable.
We showed Sam Creamer our rough cut and he gave us some feedback and said that the entire piece should be the quality it is for the second half as it gets a lot better. I agree with Sam in this as we have a fair few decent scenes included like my graduation photo shoot introduction scene. We made some of the changes Sam suggested and went to see Helen the following day for a fine cut viewing. As it turned out we received a lot more constructive feedback than we initially thought, which seemed like a setback but was actually genuinely useful. I knew our piece was missing something and at times seemed tedious with its limited camera positioning, and lengthy pieces to camera. Our option was to cut this down and have quicker cuts, as Helen suggested the high energy is lost with the lengthy PTCs with one shot. After receiving this feedback we decided to cut the 'top five tips' package and just up the quality of everything else and reshuffle the order. This was a big jump to make and meant re-filming some sequences again which was a huge setback for us, but we agreed with Helens feedback and all knew inside it was the right thing to do. Yes, we need up throwing away a lot of our footage we worked hard on planning, filming and editing but Helen was right; it was our of place and needed to be a lot faster paced in order to keep up with the energy throughout the rest of the episode. We re-filmed some sequences and re-shuffled the edit and made it flow a lot better. I'm pleased with the changes we made and feel it also acts on what Sam said about the quality being on the same high-level throughout.
Conclusion
This News Production unit has been a great experience and something I've taken a lot from. After analysing all the positives and negatives I'm pleased to say that despite our setbacks, we've all come on leaps and bounds, and importantly worked together as a team and not given up at the first sign of failure. I am equally as pleased with what I've learned and achieved myself. I feel I did well as presenter and came across confident and outgoing, hopefully doing our brand 'News Grad' proud. Just to conclude, I've composed a short list of overall strengths and weaknesses, which I have learned form and would apply if I ever got the opportunity to film such content again.Strengths
- My organisation meant we were quick the filming and despite limited time and crew on some shoots, still came to with a half decent footage.
- We remained focused as a group and despite setbacks, managed to overcome them in planning, filming and editing.
- As a presenter I feel I came across well and was interested in what I was talking about
- I feel like my skills development in using the softwares 'After Effects' and 'Adobe Audition' is a strength to recognise.
- My production skills were also a strength. Having worked in live television I was able to carry some of these skills over and carried out each task in a professional manner. Although stressed at times, I managed to perceiver through with the help of my team.
- I managed to master my dialogue by learning and revising the script to what felt natural to my dialogue and the way I speak.
- I feel as a group we should've done a detailed shot list to make filming easier and ensure we have all the right coverage.
- Although the issues we had for our interview weren't entirely our fault, I feel we could've prevented some issues by getting to our location even earlier.
After listing my strengths and weaknesses I've found that i have a lot to take into future projects. I've,
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